The time has come to return to the surface.

Today (November 5th) I'm publishing the blurb for Alberto Pucheu's beautiful poetry book, which will be launched next Tuesday at the Livraria da Travessa bookstore in Ipanema, Rio de Janeiro.

We don't have time for poetry. Perhaps the sadness hidden behind the fake smiles on social media stems from this lack. It is not without distress that we witness the theft of time by the production and consumption system of contemporary life. The system that kidnaps bodies and minds, that spares no attention and no human capacity for contemplation. 

There is no time for poetry, which opposes this state of affairs, because the production of language is in the hands of large media corporations and companies that have virtualized life and pretend to entertain people of all ages when, in reality, they enslave every body. Indignity and violence as ways of being advance and become widespread. 

Domination, as a structure of violence that sustains power, is aesthetic and political, but also ethical. In simple terms, this means that the subjectivity of any given person no longer belongs to themselves. Given that someone does not belong to themselves, it becomes obligatory to ask to whom will someone who does not belong to themselves belong?

Every word of Alberto Pucheu, in this The time has come to return to the surface. It places us against the wall, captured by the sincerity that leaps from within her writing. She comes to ask us where we are. Where one reads "my obsession is what to do," a question grows that concerns the readers, the question of what to do with this book and the existential problem it poses. This problem, related to the meaning of existing in this world, and of a world like the one we see today, may offend those who are currently happy, the practical, those who are content with the miserable spiritual life they lead because they cannot imagine that existence could be different, more intense, better, more joyful; those who have adhered to ideology, including fascism.

When reading Alberto Pucheu, we might ask ourselves if poetry is proof of anything. Perhaps in this question lies the chance to reconcile ourselves with poetry and with the life to which it is the key. It would be nice to say that we don't need to rush to answer, but perhaps that delay isn't an option. 

Poetry is another possible world that opens paths to other possible worlds. And in this case, it is also about poetry as an image of life, poetry as a metaphor for utopias.

Alberto Pucheu once wrote "It is necessary to learn to stay submerged" and helped us to stay submerged; now, he pulls us to the surface, offering us time to breathe. Inside the book, the necessary air to navigate and overcome a suffocating world.